


Lamb to the Slaughter

by Star_Going_Supernova



Category: Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, But only a little, F/M, Gen, Kidnapping, No Divorce AU, Pre-Godzilla: King of The Monsters (2019), nothing too serious tho, thoughts of injury and death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-12 15:27:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,093
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28637736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Star_Going_Supernova/pseuds/Star_Going_Supernova
Summary: Life is good for the Russells, who worked out their problems and decided their family was worth fighting for. They're happy, working on a project their passionate about, and spending as much time with their daughter as possible.But as everyone knows, all good things must come to an end.
Relationships: Emma Russell & Madison Russell, Godzilla (Legendary | MonsterVerse) & Mark Russell, Madison Russell & Mark Russell, Mark Russell/Emma Russell
Comments: 39
Kudos: 51





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> (Would you believe that the Mark/Emma tag didn't exist before now? Like, I get they're divorced, but there's an Alan/Emma tag. How has Mark/Emma never been done before?)
> 
> Anyway, it was quite a while ago that I brought this AU up, but I just couldn’t help myself and finally wrote this. Thanks and credit to Mothnem for the Titanus Fenrir suggestion! 
> 
> [Blood // Water](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc_8tbGhXUc) by grandson, anyone? 
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy!

In September of 2015, about a year and a half after the tragedy of San Francisco, Mark and Emma Russell renewed their vows with their daughter and all their friends present. The past months had been difficult, and in the privacy of their kitchen long after Maddie’s bedtime, the question of divorce had come up time and again.

In the end, after much debate, multiple whisper-shouted arguments, counseling, and two weeks apart to themselves, they decided their family was worth fighting for. They refused to allow tragedy and grief to tear them apart.

The ceremony only took place after many more months of working through their problems.

New rings were picked out, and their original wedding bands were relegated to a length of ribbon, tied around the neck of Andrew’s favorite stuffed animal. Since they never found his body, it served as a more comforting memorial than the plaque on their family plot.

Maddie, at eight years old, was delighted to be flower girl. She received a silver locket decorated with amber and ruby stones. It’d been engraved on the inside. Only the the three remaining Russells were privy to what it said.

In the years to follow, the family would heal. Mark and Emma would set out to perfect an old project of theirs, in hopes of preventing a situation like San Francisco from ever happening again. The ORCA became part of Project Legacy, and no one involved had to ask whose legacy it truly was. Andrew’s death would always hurt, but through this, he would be remembered.

They traveled often, and frequently with one or another of their Monarch friends, in order to best study the known hibernating Titans. There was always someone willing to watch their daughter for them, but it was a rare occasion when Maddie didn’t accompany their research trips. She breezed through schoolwork in order to hang out with the different scientists at outposts around the world.

When she wasn’t busy absorbing random bits and pieces from them, she was learning to play guitar. Andrew, only months before his death, had received a custom one for Christmas and had thrown himself into practicing. His, to Maddie’s deep distress, had been lost in the destruction of the city. Someday, she was determined to learn her brother’s favorite song.

For the next three years or so, despite the initial bumps in the road, the Russells were more than content with the direction their lives had taken.

• • • 

Mark popped his spine with a groan. He really had to stop slouching so much, over piles of data or computer keyboards. Ignoring the ache, he gathered up the contents of his workspace and returned it all to their intended places in his backpack. At long last, he had everything he’d come here for and could return to his family.

“You headin’ out soon?” one of the outpost’s full-time researchers, a brilliant woman by the name of Ellen, asked. She laughed when he made a show of packing up faster.

“Packed everything else last night,” he told her, already smiling at the thought of getting to go home. “I’ll be out of here by noon.”

“And abandon the rest of us in the process,” she joked. “Not to mention the poor puppy.”

“ _Puppy,_ she says.” Mark shook his head. “Yeah, ’cause ‘Titanus Fenrir’ really makes me think of adorable, clumsy little puppies.” He paused, elbow-deep in his bag. “Maddie’s gonna call him a puppy, I just know it.”

Ellen laughed. “Next time one of you guys have to come out here, you should bring her with. After all the stories from other outposts, we can’t help but think you’ve got something against us.”

Swinging his heavy backpack up over his shoulder, Mark said, “She’d have been happy to come, but the timing was off. Mothra’s due to hatch this week, probably already has, and Maddie wasn’t about to miss that.”

“Can’t blame her. Maybe ole Fenrir will wake up so we can all play fetch next time.”

“I’m not sure I want a two-hundred-thirty-four-foot wolf Titan turning the world into his backyard.” He went over to where Ellen was sitting and offered his hand. “It was great working with you, Ellen. Thank you for all your help with our project.”  
  
“It was my pleasure, Mark. Say hi to your family from Norway.”

Mark gave her one last pat on the shoulder before heading to the door. He’d just pulled it open when Ellen called at his back, “Oh, and—that’s seventy-one meters to you, so long as you’re in my outpost!”

Laughing, he waved his hand over his head and stepped into the hallway. After a quick stop to his room to grab his duffle, he made his way to the landing pad where an Osprey was waiting to take him back to Outpost 61. Having said his goodbyes at dinner last night, he only smiled and nodded at the people he passed, who sent him on with smiles of their own and plenty of well-wishes.

He entered the lounge where the pilots would be waiting for him and came to an abrupt halt in the doorway. “Vivienne?” he asked. “Serizawa? What are you two doing here? Shouldn’t you be in the States?”

But as they both turned to face him, a pit formed in his stomach. Something was wrong. Vivienne’s eyes were red-rimmed and shiny, and she held a crumpled tissue in one hand. Serizawa’s expression was flat, a tell-tale sign that he was holding in anger.

Mark dropped his duffle with a thump and set down his backpack considerably more gently. Approaching his two friends, he asked, “What’s happened? What’s wrong?”

Vivienne opened her mouth, only to close it and turn away with a little sob punched out of her. Growing more anxious by the second, Mark tried to keep from fidgeting while Serizawa visibly gathered himself.

“Mark,” he said, “I am so sorry. We received terrible news just a few hours ago. Shortly after Mothra’s hatching, Outpost 61 was invaded.”

His ears rang with static, and he just barely made it to the couch before his legs gave out. Bracing his elbows on his knees, Mark dragged his hands over his face. The couch sagged on either side of him, and when he let his hands fall, Vivienne was quick to take one between her own.

“Maddie and Emma,” he rasped. “Are they—”

“Alive,” Vivienne reassured him. “And as far as we could tell from the security footage, unharmed.”

Serizawa lowly continued, “The same cannot be said for most of the others. The invaders were all armed.”

“Then—”

He’d never seen Serizawa look as serious and grim as he did then. “I’m afraid your family was the target. They’ve been kidnapped, Mark. And Emma was forced to bring the ORCA with them.”

Vivienne’s fingers tightened around his as he squeezed his eyes shut, feeling like he’d been punched in the gut. He roughly pressed his free hand against his mouth, physically holding back all the curses he wanted to shout at the world.

“Who?” he asked.

“Alan Jonah was the leader of the group,” Vivienne answered. “Are you familiar at all with that name?”

He shook his head, even as he wracked his brain. But there was no sense of familiarity, not even distantly.

She continued, “He’s an eco-terrorist. Monarch has kept an eye out for him ever since he escaped a holding cell in 2014 and vanished. We think he attempted to get into contact with Emma shortly after, during the situation with the MUTO Prime. As far as we know, he failed.”

“A terrorist has my family.” This had to be a dream, a nightmare, on par with half the stuff San Francisco inspired in him. “Why?”

It was a pointless question. But he still wanted to hear it said outside of his own head. There weren’t many things an eco-terrorist could want the ORCA and its operator for.

“All the outposts are on high alert,” Serizawa told him, right to the point. “Those who are looking into the case are confident that he’ll want to be at the scene when they use the ORCA on a Titan, instead of doing it remotely.”

“The arrogance of the man,” Vivienne hissed lowly. A glance at her told Mark she was seething, no matter how teary-eyed she was. Jonah better hope he was never left alone in a room with Vivienne Graham.

Although, Serizawa didn’t seem much better. There was equal promise and threat in his voice when he said, “We’ll find them, Mark, and bring Maddie and Emma home. Jonah won’t get away with this.”

• • •

The ORCA’s success in calming Mothra down was bittersweet. Emma glared at the device she’d spent so much time and effort on, and if looks could cause spontaneous combustion…

But no. If she could set things on fire with nothing more than an angry look, their kidnappers—Jonah especially—would be the first to go. Reflexively, for only the hundredth time since they were snapped on her, she tugged at the handcuffs. Her wrists were red and raw, sore from how harshly she’d struggled in the beginning.

Further down the aisle of the stolen aircraft, Maddie’s wrists were still sluggishly dripping blood. While Emma had finally stopped, her daughter had not, and even now, was making the chain clink quietly as she yanked against the restraints.

Seeing handcuffs on Maddie was chilling enough, but the thing that set her veins freezing even as a paradoxical inferno blazed in her heart was the way Jonah was sitting beside her, an arm around her shoulders keeping Maddie from scooting away.

From the start, when they’d been yanked to their feet at gunpoint—Emma having crouched protectively over her daughter, out on the catwalk—Maddie had been kept away from her. Never out of sight, but always out of reach. Always near Jonah.

She’d already been sick once when it occurred to her what would happen when she refused to use the ORCA for their destructive plan. Jonah had already proved he didn’t shy away from shooting people point-blank in the head.

A lackey nearby still bore proof of her paralyzing realization on his shoes. Vindictively, she wished she hadn’t hunched over, but had instead aimed at his face. Maybe next time.

People could be high and mighty, all _kill the one to save the many,_ but they could rot for all she cared. Maddie’s death wouldn’t stop Jonah anyway. Considering how he’d slaughtered everyone in his path to the ORCA, one more death wouldn’t phase him.

Had she been taken on her own, Emma would’ve refused to unleash the Titans on an unsuspecting world no matter what. The ORCA was meant to do good things, to keep more cities from being leveled. She’d have died for that conviction, if it came to it.

But there wasn’t a bone in her body that would let Maddie die for it.

So she knew what would inevitably happen. Emma would refuse to cooperate at first, on principle first and foremost, but also for her peace of mind. Jonah would make his threats, and whether the first or the twentieth was aimed at Maddie, whether they turned knives or guns on Emma before resorting to the ace up their sleeve, then and only then would she cave.

It would put the rest of the world in danger, to be sure. But Emma would challenge any mother—any parent—to stand back and let a terrorist murder their child. She’d lost one already, and come hell or high water—and hell _would_ come, at her call, but only when a gun was pressed to Maddie’s head—she wouldn’t lose her last.

Emma watched her daughter, only twelve years old—the same age as Andrew when he’d died, and she refused to think of that as something like an omen, or a curse—and found the blood dripping down her pale fingers, slowly forming a puddle on the dark metal floor, comforting.

The dead couldn’t struggle, after all. And sooner or later, the dead stopped bleeding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hm. More?
> 
> • [my tumblr](https://star-going-supernova.tumblr.com) •


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Couldn’t get this scene out of my head, so here, have a surprise mini-update!
> 
> Hope y’all enjoy!

Godzilla’s presence at Castle Bravo was hardly a new thing, but his clear agitation was. He circled the base almost lazily, but anyone would be able to tell the abnormal lashing of his tail and the sporadic pulses of light through his spines meant trouble.

An extremely low growl echoed through the sound system when Rick briefly tuned in to the King’s vocalizations. “Yeah, he’s pissed,” was his scientific observation.

“It can’t be a coincidence,” Vivienne muttered to Serizawa. “The timing…”

Mark didn’t pay attention to the conversation after that, instead moving to stand directly in front of the giant window. He held a tablet tightly against his chest, and even though the screen was dark, he could still clearly picture the security footage it had played back for him a dozen times.

The kidnapping of his family. More importantly, the face of the monster who did it.

_Jonah can go to hell,_ he thought, not for the first time. Trying to keep from tapping his foot, Mark waited for Godzilla to make another circuit around the base.

He wouldn’t go so far as to say they’d trained the Titan to approach the window when someone was standing at it. Given everything he’d seen and knew about the King, it did his intelligence a disservice. No, if anything, Godzilla had simply learned that people standing at the window were specifically waiting for him.

With his atomic breath on the verge of activation, Godzilla’s eyes seemed to flicker between burning red-gold and an impossibly bright blue. As always, he carefully swerved closer the moment he turned the corner and spotted Mark.

Lacking a way to hold a true conversation, no one was _really_ sure how much English he—or any Titan—could understand. If Mark had to guess, it was more than the average person might assume. If simple animals like cats and dogs comprehend as much as they were capable of, surely Godzilla surpassed them.

Godzilla’s snout wrinkled, and a rumbling growl vibrated the glass and floor beneath Mark’s feet. It wasn’t enough to shake the whole room, though, so for the most part, no one else noticed.

“Listen, big guy,” Mark said, powering the tablet back on and sneering down at the frozen frame from the security footage it displayed. “I know you’re usually pretty careful with us humans. But if you see this man—” He flipped the tablet to show Godzilla the picture of Jonah— “do me a favor and try to step on him or something.”

Turning his head so one eye faced Mark, Godzilla seemed to stare for a handful of seconds. Whether or not he was actually committing the likeness to memory, it made Mark feel a little better. A stream of bubbles rushed out of the Titan’s mouth, a typical sign that he’d huffed or made some other noise.

“He kidnapped my wife and daughter,” Mark muttered darkly. “He’ll hurt them to get what he wants, and we think he wants to command Titans to do his bidding. We just don’t know who he’ll go for first.” He snorted and glared at the tablet. “Probably biggest and baddest, but what do I know.”

Godzilla reared back, and this time, his growl was audible even without the sound system. Blue flooded his eyes. The ocean behind his head was suddenly illuminated brightly from his spines.

In an impressive show of maneuverability and care, Godzilla whipped around and sped off without so much as brushing against the base, despite how close he’d been to it.

“What’d you say to him to get him to rush off like that?” Rick called.

Thinking back over his words, Mark slowly turned to face the rest of the room. “…I think he knows who Jonah’ll target first.”

“Are you sure?” Serizawa asked, stepping forward. Behind him, Rick started mumbling to himself as he rapidly typed away at his computer setup.

“I can’t imagine what else would have gotten him to take off like that, but I could be wrong,” Mark admitted. “I mentioned that Jonah probably wants to control the Titans, and—” He gestured back at the window. “That happened.”

“We know from the incident with the MUTOs that Godzilla is adept at sensing danger when it comes to other Titans,” Vivienne said, joining him and Serizawa in front of Rick’s desk. “If his agitation was caused by some—gut instinct, of sorts…”

“Can you track him, Dr. Stanton?” Serizawa asked, twisting around.

“Yeah. We’re in luck; he’s not trying to avoid being found today.” He paused to focus on one of his screens. “We might lose him in a tunnel if he’s going far, but he's definitely heading south.”

“Then… to Behemoth?” Mark said, frowning. “There aren’t any Titans further south than him, are there?”

Vivienne let out a soft gasp beside him. She looked haunted as she raised fearful eyes to his. “One,” she said faintly. “In Antarctica. We don’t keep that one in the main database, in case something were to happen to the files.”

Dread filled Mark. “Why? Who is it?”

“We call him,” Vivienne said grimly, “Monster Zero.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don't know about you guys, but I'm enjoying a Mark who doesn't resent Titans or want them dead.
> 
> I hope you all know that I love you very, very much. ❤️
> 
> • [my tumblr](https://star-going-supernova.tumblr.com) •


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The POV in this story is like playing a game of hot potato. Sorry? But also, not sorry, because it’s very fun for me to play with so many different characters. 
> 
> Hope y’all enjoy!

A tense silence filled the aircraft. Besides the whirr of the engines, only the occasional rustle of paper—Mark sifting through the file on Monster Zero—and the anxious tapping of Mark’s left foot filled the air. Were it not for said engines, perhaps all and sundry would have been able to hear the grinding of Vivienne’s teeth.

She clenched her fists around the mittens she held. No matter how much she tried, she couldn’t stop mentally replaying the footage from Outpost 61. Monarch was something of a large extended family in and of itself, for those who had been around long enough, but smaller familial groups had formed as well. The Russells had been part of hers for years.

And now Emma and Maddie had been taken.

Vivienne’s fury would not settle until she knew their kidnapper had taken his last breath. As far as she was concerned, Jonah’s days were severely numbered.

Serizawa’s hand closed over top hers and gently pried her fingers loose. “You’ll rip them,” he muttered, freeing her mittens from her stranglehold.

“I was practicing,” she told him, only halfway joking.

He chuckled as he settled back down, hands folded in his lap.

Of course, Vivienne wouldn’t choke the man to death. She knew her limits, and while she didn’t doubt she could turn Jonah blue with the strength of her righteous rage, she knew better than to expect a terrorist to play fair. No, no.

That was what the gun at her hip was for. Certainly not for Monster Zero, and not so much for her own protection as it was for her self-assigned roll of judge, jury, and executioner. And she’d seen the evidence, counted the bodies, and ruled him guilty. All that was left was for her to carry out his punishment—Alan Jonah is hereby sentenced to death.

A man who had slipped from custody before would surely be able to do so again; she wouldn’t give him the chance to try. If she had her way, Jonah would be dead before anyone could so much as threaten him with handcuffs.

Mark looked up at them from across the aisle, his eyes tired. Vivienne ached for him. He had already lost his son, and now his wife and daughter’s lives were on the line. She doubted he would survive losing them, too.

“You think we’ll get there in time?” he asked.

Serizawa sighed heavily. “I can only hope we do, Mark. This is our best chance to intercept him, before Jonah can attempt to go into hiding.”

“You think he would?”

“He has in the past,” Vivienne contemplated. “His confidence… his _arrogance_ —they rival his self-preservation. We can’t predict him well enough to determine whether his need to show off or his need to stay free will win after he realizes we’re closer to him than he thought.”

Mark muttered something uncomplimentary under his breath.

“Both Emma and Maddie are resourceful,” Serizawa added. “Should Jonah make his escape with them today, I would not be entirely surprised if they found some way to contact us, if only to give away his location.”

Nodding, Mark said, “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, though.”

“Of course.” Vivienne twisted her mittens. “We’ll do everything we can to put an end to his plan today.”

Their phones all pinged with an update on Godzilla’s location from Rick, back at Castle Bravo, along with the grim news that Outpost 32 was no longer responding to any attempts at communication. Monarch was still a few hours out.

“He’s not wasting any time,” Mark said bitterly.

Vivienne made a conscious effort to unclench her jaw. “If that man has the misfortune to cross paths with me…” She trailed off for a moment. “Mark my words, he won’t make it out of that confrontation alive.”

Serizawa gripped her shoulder. “I am well aware,” he said.

Mark snorted out a laugh. “You’ll have to get in line. Godzilla seems eager enough to do our dirty work for us. He’ll beat us there.”

“On the contrary,” Vivienne said, squaring her shoulders back. “Godzilla will have to get in line behind _me._ ”

• • •

Anticipation coiled in Godzilla’s spines. His very being vibrated with the approaching threat, felt first in his heart, so attuned to his planet as it was, and confirmed by the humans at the sea base.

His enemy would return soon, his Queen already had, and there was no telling which else of his kindred would also come to walk the earth again by the time this disaster came to an end.

Just once, couldn’t they all meet again under pleasant circumstances? Why did there always have to be some threat heralding their return?

A dozen small things had put him in a foul mood that day. Water boiled harmlessly in his mouth as his star-fire surged in his throat, unprompted but responding to his emotional state as always, much like the luminescence of Mothra’s wings.

Godzilla twisted expertly through his underground pathways, taking him to the bottom of the world. He growled to himself.

Humans, yet again, were involved. A most troublesome species. They were like foolish pups, always thinking more of themselves than they had earned. Not all of them, though. Many feared him, as was appropriate, but others seemed to have a fondness for him, which wasn’t… as bad as he might have once expected.

Mothra would mercilessly tease him if she knew of the soft spot he had developed for the curious humans who lived in the sea base. They sought knowledge, and though he’d been wary of what they wanted it _for,_ they had yet to attempt to use any of it against him. Many even seemed quite convinced he could understand them—and he _could,_ but he hadn’t ever intended to let them _know_ that—and appeared content to share in one-sided conversations with him.

It was still strange to him. But not necessarily unwelcome, he had found.

Part of the reason for his furious race through his tunnels was those silly, almost frustratingly likable humans. He had spent long enough watching, observing, and cataloguing the different people in the sea base to come to understand many of their relations.

Two humans from that base had been kidnapped by the human intending to wake his old foe. That was what the man had told him, and he knew that man and his family. The daughter he spoke of was the sole child who ever visited that window, often armed with a strange wooden device capable of creating music. She had mentioned some time ago that she and her mother would be away for a while, gone to observe Mothra’s hatching.

He liked them. Even if he didn’t, it was a cruel thing to take another creature’s family away from him, and Godzilla would have been willing to help anyway. Should the opportunity to step on their captor, or perhaps devour him, or render him to ash with star-fire, arise, Godzilla would gladly take it.

It was his duty as King, after all, to keep those under his protection safe.

The waters turned colder as he neared his destination, teeth bared. There were two foes, two monsters, for him to face today. It mattered little that one was human, and one was not. Both would feel his wrath.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who will get to Jonah first: Vivienne or Godzilla? That’s for me to know, and you to find out. :) 
> 
> Also, this story is officially no longer a one-shot plus a bonus bit, and has been marked as a WIP. Oops?
> 
> • [my tumblr](https://star-going-supernova.tumblr.com) •


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